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Guest (Female): Welcome to PowerPoint with Jack Graham. It's attitude that makes the difference between winners and losers. I'm not talking about pie in the sky, but the kind of attitude that learns to deal with disappointment and disillusionment by faith.

On today's PowerPoint, Dr. Graham brings a message about being victorious even in the face of tough times. Now here's Dr. Graham with his message, "When Life Isn't Fair."

Jack Graham: There are many times in life when we are treated unfairly. Sometimes by friends, sometimes even by family, and sometimes by those who oppose us. Out of the blue it seems we are mistreated or misjudged and we find ourselves facing mistreatment that we feel we didn't deserve.

If you've ever felt like a victim in life, if you've ever felt as though you got a shortchange in life, then certainly this message is for you. It's for all of us because from time to time we all recognize our need to understand the providence of God in the painful experiences of life. It may be that you're in an experience just like that right now.

Now when God showed Joseph his dreams, the stars and the sheaves, these wonderful dreams that God put in his heart and mind as a youth, he could have never imagined how long it would take to discover his destiny and for those dreams to be fulfilled. Let's review just for a moment.

When Joseph was a lad, he was favored by his father and he was given a beautiful coat, a coat of many colors. And he wore it as a sign of dignity. It was a picture of his birthright and he wore that beautiful coat in honor of his family name. But his brothers hated it. They hated him for his dream, hated him for his personality, probably hated him because of their father's love for him.

As a result, those brothers cruelly sold him into slavery. He was picked up in a caravan of nomads who hauled him off, sold him into slavery, and he was transported to Egypt. And there as a slave in Egypt, living alone, yet with God in his heart, yet trusting God all the way, he rose to prominence even as a slave and became the slave captain in the house of Potiphar, a very powerful man in Egypt who had a very beautiful wife by the name of Paula.

Remember her? Well, the Bible doesn't say her name was Paula. I've just named her Paula Potiphar because don't think of some stuffy Egyptian. Think of Cleopatra of the Nile here. This lady no doubt was a beautiful lady and a very powerful lady. She was in all the newspapers of the time and certainly on the society page. You could always see Mrs. Potiphar proudly wearing her beauty.

She must have been a beautiful woman and she was either in a state of dress or undress all of her life and she's a very seductive woman. And she cast her eyes upon this handsome Hebrew by the name of Joseph because Joseph was a strong and handsome youth, by now 27 years of age. You would have supposed as a result of his obedience to God, you would have assumed that because he was so faithful and so true to his Lord and to his character and to his conviction, that immediately he would have been rewarded for his efforts, rewarded for his purity.

But as a matter of fact, something very different happened and that's where we pick up in our reading beginning in chapter 39 and let's start in verse 11. "But it happened about this time when Joseph went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was inside, that she caught him by his garment saying 'Lie with me.' But he left his garment in her hand and fled and ran outside."

"And so it was when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and fled outside, that she called to the men of her house and spoke to them saying, 'See, he has brought in to us a Hebrew to mock us. He came into me to lie with me and I cried out with a loud voice.'" She cried rape, in other words. "And it happened when he heard that I lifted my voice and cried out that he left his garment with me and fled and went outside."

"So she kept his garment with her until her master, that is Mr. Potiphar, came home. And then she spoke to him with words like these saying, 'The Hebrew servant whom you brought to us came in to me to mock me. So it happened as I lifted my voice and cried out that he left his garment with me and fled outside.'"

"And so it was when his master heard the words which his wife spoke to him saying, 'Your servant did to me after this manner,' then his anger was aroused. The Hebrew language puts it: his anger burned. He was aflame with passionate anger." Verse 20. "Then Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in the prison."

Don't you just wonder after Potiphar settled down and he began to think about Mrs. Potiphar's story and about the garment and about the Hebrew, knowing the character of Joseph, it was this man Potiphar who saw that this man was so different and so unique, don't you perhaps think that while he got to thinking about it, perhaps he realized that his wife wasn't telling the truth?

Otherwise, if he was that angry, why didn't he just have the young Hebrew's head cut off? I don't know, but I suspect that somehow Potiphar put Joseph in prison but knowing all the while in his heart that he was an innocent man. So he was put into prison and confined and there he was in prison. But then note verse 21, it's a phrase that occurs again and again and again in the life story of Joseph.

"But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy and he gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever they did there, it was his doing. And the keeper of the prison did not look into anything that was under Joseph's hand because the Lord was with him and whatever he did, the Lord made it to prosper."

Now from Potiphar's fine palatial house where he heard the clinking of China, now he hears nothing but the clanging of chains, manacles in that prison. From the sweet smell of Paula's perfume, now the filthy stench of refuse at the bottom of this prison pit. And after some success in Egypt, after the disappointment of being sold into slavery, now after some kind of success when God's favor and hand seemed to be upon him, now he's back right where he started: at the bottom of a big old pit.

Do you think maybe just a little bit he might have asked himself something like, can you believe this? Can you imagine this? I resist that evil woman and this is what I get. And just for a moment do you think Joseph thought, has God forsaken me? Has God forgotten the promises that he made so long ago? Am I going to live the rest of my life like this, in chains, in a dungeon?

How did Joseph survive this? How do we survive when something unfair and unjust victimizes us? First of all, attitude. The longer that I live, the more I realize that it's attitude, attitude, attitude that makes the difference between winners and losers, between success and failure. It is attitude that advances us in all the circumstances of life.

I'm not talking about just a Pollyannish kind of attitude, pie in the sky, but the kind of attitude that learns to deal with disappointment and disillusionment by faith. Faith in God. That's the attitude I'm talking about. You know the Bible says in Romans chapter 5 that tribulation, tests, produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.

So the way to keep from being disappointed in life is for your character to be built. And if you want God to build your character, you have to deal with the adversities of life. When you read of Joseph, you never see negativity. You don't see bitterness. You don't find grudges. You find a man who has learned in his attitude to trust in God. Psalm 37:9 says, "Don't fret because of evildoers."

Don't wring your hands because of the injustice. Don't fret because of what's happened to you because God is in charge of taking care of those who have hurt you and wounded you. God is in charge of making you strong through the trials of life. So don't fret evildoers. Romans tells us to overcome evil with good. Don't strive for retaliation or revenge. There's nothing here of that in the life of Joseph.

There's nothing here of "if I could just get my hands on that Mrs. Potiphar, it would be the end of her." He doesn't try to take control of his own circumstances and the punishment of others. There are three words in your life that are very precious and very valuable to learn and to practice: Let it go. That's what Joseph was able to do. Rather than living and grinding in the injustices and the mistreatment of his life, he was able to turn loose and to let it go.

Keep your place there in Genesis 39 and turn to 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 19 and 20. "For this is commendable if because of conscience toward God one endures grief suffering wrongly. For what credit is it if when you are beaten for your faults you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer for it, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God."

"For to this you were called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you would follow in his steps." How do you survive the unjust experiences of life, the mistreatments of life? Attitude, and then acceptance. It was the acceptance for Joseph that God truly was in charge of his life.

Now Romans 8:28, of course, is a well-known, well-worn scripture for every believer who knows and loves his Bible. Romans 8:28 speaks of the providence of God and there's no more stirring illustration of Romans 8:28 than the life of Joseph. "For we know that all things work together for the good to them who love the Lord, to those who are called according to his purpose."

For we know. We know. We know. How do we know? How do we know? Not by what we feel, not the shifting sands of emotion, but by what we know because of what God has said. The hymn writer said, "What more can he say than to you he has said?" What more does God have to say to us to assure us that he cares, that he's in control, that nothing happens outside the parameters of his perfect will for our lives?

That where he doesn't rule, he overrules, that he is sovereign. Our trust in Romans 8:28 is a belief in the word of God based upon what God said. We know. We know. We know these promises of God. Please don't think of Romans 8:28 as a kind of sugar pill for life. This is a principle for life: that what God is doing is called providence. That God works for good and works good always out of both good and bad experiences of our lives. Why?

Because of his sovereign purpose and will for us. Now most of us as believers, we've got the grace through faith part down when it comes to salvation. We know that we're not saved by works. But when it comes to suffering, we've got it all messed up again and we go back to works. And here's how we do it: we think, well, if something good happens to me, it must be because I'm doing good. Look at how God's blessing me.

Look at all these things that I have. Look at these nice clothes that I wear. Look at this nice house that we live in. Look at the nice car that we drive. Look at how well my children are doing in school. Look how good God is. It must be because I'm living on the straight and narrow, I'm obeying God, and God just keeps blessing me because I'm obeying him. That's so good.

And then if something bad happens to us, you know what we start thinking? Well, what's wrong? I must have done something wrong. I must be living in disobedience or I must be living in sin or what am I doing or what am I not doing? Why are these things happening to me? Why is God treating me this way? Haven't I earned his favor? Haven't I done enough?

We think: haven't I worked hard enough? Haven't I been faithful in my church? Haven't I served the Lord? Haven't I done everything God's wanting me to do and now look what's happened to me! You see, we like the part where it says God's working all those good things in our lives, but we don't like the part when it says that God takes bad things and uses those things for his glory.

And we've got it all messed up because we think that somehow the good and the bad comes in life based on how good we are or how bad we are. It just ain't so. Now I'm not suggesting that God doesn't discipline us when we do wrong because I believe the Bible teaches that. But can I tell you that providence teaches us that God allows both the good things in life and the bad things in life to come to us? Not on the basis of our good works or our bad works, but based upon his sovereign purpose and will for us.

There you have it. You see why I said we had the salvation by grace part down, but we don't have this part down yet? It's just hard for us to accept the fact that bad things can happen to good people and that God somehow could be a part of it, or that God could somehow allow it to happen.

But when you read the life of Joseph, if you read it honestly, you have to admit that God sent some bad things into his life. Bad things, man! But all along God was working it for something perfect, something good, something great. And what Joseph had learned that we need to learn is to accept it. To accept the loving grace of God no matter what.

Realizing that God is there, he hasn't left us, he hasn't abandoned us, that he knows something that we don't know, that he's doing something that we may not understand. But he is there, he loves you, and he will never leave or forsake you. That's where we've got to get. There was a man who lived in 19th-century Scotland by the name of George Matheson.

And he was a promising young man and he had a beautiful, beautiful girl to whom he was to be married. He went to the doctor because he noticed that he was not seeing as well. He was a writer and a poet and wrote terrific prose and he began to notice that something was wrong with his eyes. So he went to the doctor only to discover at the doctor's office that he was losing his eyesight permanently, that he had a degenerative eye disease, and that in just a few months or years he would be totally blind.

Just a young, handsome, articulate, promising young man and now he's going to be blind. Well, he thought: I need to tell my fiance. And hoping against hope that she would accept it and understand that she was to be the wife of a man who was blind or would be blind. And so young George went to his fiance and told her the story and gave her the prognosis.

And she said, "I can't do it. I can't be the wife of a blind man." And so the engagement was broken and his heart was broken. But George had a deep, abiding faith in the promises and in the providence of God. And so he sat down to write a hymn and we're told that just in a few minutes' time, five minutes or so, he wrote these words.

"O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be. O joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be."

And always in the storms of life for the Christian, God hangs a promise, a beautiful promise to say, "I am there, I am with you." And we can with blinded eyes trace the rainbow through the rain. Eyes blinded to why, eyes blinded as to the reason, but yet tracing the rainbow through the rain, we realize that we are possessed by one whose love will never let us go. O love that will not let me go!

And you may be forsaken of friends and abandoned by the dearest and best in your life, but cling to his promises. Can you thank God for the experiences in your life even though you don't understand them and you may never understand them this side of eternity? Can you thank God for those and with the Apostle Paul say, "I give thanks for everything, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning me and concerning you."

Can I thank you God for trusting me with this experience in my life? If you're in a tough time and in a dungeon and in a hole in your life, it just may be that God has you there to see if he can trust you with the experience and that out of that experience you can grow and develop into the man or the woman that God wants you to be.

This is what you do when life seems unfair: you face it with the right attitude of faith and acceptance and with the affirmation that God is God, that he is in charge, and the knowledge that he loves you with an eternal love.

Guest (Female): Remember, when you give a gift to PowerPoint, we'll send you Dr. Jeremiah Johnston's book "The Jesus Discoveries." Just text JUNE to 59789. And join us again next time as Dr. Graham brings a message about recovering from difficult circumstances. That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.